Lawmakers may have headed home en masse for the year, but smaller bands and bunches of them will drop back in the Capitol from time to time over the next several months to reconsider issues left in limbo during the regular session.

The hope is, at least among sponsors of the bills, that doubts and disagreements over the details of the proposed legislation can be worked out and the legislation will have a better shot of passage next year.

Almost two dozen bills were sent to “summer study” for further review this year, giving lawmakers more time during the legislative off-season to explore the ins, outs and implications of potentially controversial or complicated issues before the 2012 session.

Many times, lawmakers shove those bills into the study committee meetings to get the legislation out of the committee’s hair without rejecting it. Other times, they take those study committees seriously and spend months examining policy, statistics and reports to determine whether it’s worth changing the law.

Lawmakers have yet to determine which of these bills will actually be taken up this summer. That decision is up to the committee chairman and the bill’s sponsor.

Lawmakers don’t vote on any legislation while they consider it in summer study, but they can use the time to draft a preferred piece of legislation the body will OK once the next session gets rolling.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the bills lawmakers could take up this summer:

Lawmakers have bickered for a couple years now about whether they can skip posting legal notices or government business notifications in dead-tree newspapers and stick them online instead. Senators will take up that issue as they mull two bills that would create pilot projects in Knox and Hamilton County, respectively.

- Who To Lead Water Utility Districts (SB500, Sen. Charlotte Burks) and (SB830, Sen. Jim Summerville)

These two bills will be taken up together. They pertain to how commissioners of water utility districts should be chosen, whether it be through appointments or elections. The first bill considers a specific utility district in White County while the latter concerns districts in Lawrence County.

This measure would require the Department of Mental Health to give the Legislature more frequent reports on current accommodations for patients, including the number and length of any delayed admissions.

The blunt-speaking Republican from Strawberry Plains wants the Department of Agriculture to license farmers and ranchers to raise domesticated white-tail deer. Tennessee’s state government wildlife agency and hunting groups oppose the move, saying deer-farming could introduce infectious diseases into the state’s game herds. Niceley says opponents of the bill are deliberately overstating the potential risks. He says his bill will provide a boost to struggling rural economies.

This legislation would require a child advocacy center to conduct the initial forensic interview with a child victim of alleged sexual abuse. That agency would also be in charge of any additional interviews. The catch is that this practice would take the Department of Children’s Services out of the process.

This bill expands the same visitation and custodial rights grandparents have to great-grandparents. The House Children and Family Affairs committee decided to spend a little more time on the issue this summer to examine other states’ practices and the implications. Rep. Sherry Jones said the rights shouldn’t be doled out so easily.

This bill takes the session’s education reform debate to the next level by allowing teachers to grade elementary-school parents as “excellent,” “satisfactory,” “needs improvement” or “unsatisfactory.” The same bill never advanced in the Senate.

The Tennessee Firearms Association was up in arms this session that more gun bills weren’t seriously considered this year. This bill would allow full-time faculty at public colleges with handgun carry permits to take their pieces with them to work.

This bill would make people convicted of first-degree murder who suffered from severe mental illnesses at the time of the crime exempt from the death penalty. Those criminals would instead serve life in prison or life without parole.

As lawmakers begin examining their legal requirements to post public notices in newspapers across the state, this bill would allow the Secretary of State to determine which newspapers can actually be deemed a “newspaper of general circulation.”